Wind Turbine Graveyard

by healthypages on 13/01/2012 - 01:26 pm |

Once thought of as a major source of renewable energy, many wind turbines are being abandoned. For several years the construction of wind turbines was a major element of the U.S. Government's alternative energy programme. As such in order to help with construction costs, the projects received billions of dollars from tax payers in the form of subsidies.

What is becoming increasingly alarming is the extent of abandonment that is occurring across the country as the subsidies are being cut. Without government help, the costs of maintenance, erratic weather conditions and high mechanical failure rates have meant that the turbines are just too expensive to run for the meagre amount of electricity that they produce. Over 14,000 have been abandoned so far in the US.

In the American Thinker newspaper, journalist Andrew Walden wrote that "Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California 'big three' locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world's best wind sites," adding that "In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."

Bird kills refers to the bats,birds etc that get caught and killed in the wind propellers. Construction costs were huge and so removal costs make them an undesirable project which is why they are being just left as monuments to a failed idea.

In the Charleston Daily Mail, Don Surber wrote that "It is all about the tax subsidies," who added that "The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations."